Frost Covered Windows
by Nokomiss
Summary: PostHBP interaction between Pansy Parkinson and Neville Longbottom.


Frost-Covered Windows

AN: Written for a drabble request by Leilabell

* * *

The halls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry were eerily silent as Pansy strode through them.

She hadn't accustomed herself to the emptiness of the school this year, with countless students absent and even the teaching roster devoid of familiar faces. The most vibrant personalities were gone, from Draco to Dumbledore to Snape and even to Harry Potter.

She continued with her Prefect duties, though she didn't really see the point any longer. Hogwarts was a ghost of what it had been a year ago, and the only reason she remained was to get her NEWTs finished so that she could, if all went well, get the sort of respectable job her parents wished for her.

She stayed out of the Slytherin common rooms as much as possible, anymore. The only ones left there were pale and haunted with the ghosts of sorrow in their empty eyes, and she couldn't bear the look of vague pity from the younger students at the empty spot on the couch next to hers where Draco would normally have been lounging, catlike and confident that the room was his to command.

She looked through the empty halls again, and sighed at the futility of doing Prefect duties. Hogwarts only housed a fourth of the students it had the year before, and the life seemed to have gone out of those that remained. No one was running amuck through the halls, or even sulking silently in the corners. The attack on the school last summer had assured that. Students were terrified and meek and Pansy hated them all.

She just wished this year would be over, so she could escape this everlasting hell and actually do something.

When she turned the corner and actually saw a figure silhouetted against a giant, stained-glass window, she was embarrassingly startled.

"It's past curfew," she announced briskly as she moved towards the unmoving boy, trying to see who he was in the faint light from her wand. His face was cast in shadow as he shook his head once, briskly, then remained still against the dark glass.

She was shocked to realize that the silent, unintimidated boy was Neville Longbottom. No, she thought, he wasn't really a boy any longer, anymore that she was just a girl. There were dark shadows under his eyes, and she realized that he was probably the only other person in this godforsaken school as uncowed and frustrated to be here as she.

"Go away," he said in a low, dangerous tone she never would have expected from plump, inept Neville. "I'm not bothering anyone."

She eyed him, and then leaned against the window frame, tracing her finger across the chilled glass, leaving a pale line of moonlight in her wake. "Is it as lonely in Gryffindor as it is in Slytherin?" she asked in what she prayed was an idle, insolent tone.

From the way he looked at her, startled, she realized that her tone hadn't been idle or insolent at all.

"Probably," was his whispered response.

"Why did you come back?" she asked.

"I have no where else to go," he replied. "You?"

"My parents consider my education more important than my health or happiness," Pansy said candidly. She traced a stick figure onto the glass, adding a swoop of hair that was meant to mimic her own.

"You shouldn't be so bitter about it," Neville said. "At least they care about your future."

"What, your parents don't?" she scoffed.

He shook his head slowly. "My parents don't know what happens to me," he said. "They're insane."

Pansy stared at him, shocked. "Do you mean... really?"

He nodded. "They were tortured. By Death Eaters. The same ones running free out there." He rested his hand against the window, in a bright blue pane that composed of some ancient magician's robe. "While I'm stuck here."

Pansy stared at her childish drawing of herself on the frosted glass. "I'm sorry," she whispered. She reached out to smear away the stick figure girl smiling on the glass, but Neville grabbed her hand before she could make the first wipe.

"Don't," he said, then painstakingly traced another stick figure on the glass, a careful distance away from Pansy's. "Do you believe things will all end okay?"

Pansy nodded. "The end hasn't come yet, no reason to think it will just when we're getting started."

Neville let out a nervous laugh, and after a moment Pansy joined him.

"Come on," she said before she let herself think about what she was doing. "I think we need some cocoa."

Neville's hesitant smile was enough to make her grab onto his hand, and race through the halls like a couple of first years, laughing their way through the silent halls.


End file.
